How Hollywood Cinematography Is Employed to Support Games' Cinematic Visualization

[Music] thank you talk about kind of how wood employs their techniques in the cinematics world of games so I'm a visualization supervisor at the third floor been in the industry for about 13 14 years now kind of Bounce Around between feature films and games and kind of the the trailers or just kind of like the cinematics promos outside of the in-game cinematics but it's really interesting how a lot of what we do in the big Hollywood large scale feature films and kind of trim that down scale it down and do it kind of in a really fast efficient way for games

so a little bit about me um I graduated at Ringling College of Art and Design do we have any Ringling grads here all right we always seem to find each other so I went there and kind of took a non-traditional path of breaking in an industry before going to Ringling going into Ringling as kind of a non-traditional student so I kind of came in with some experience which was awesome because I could really focus on what I love to do and that was kind of more the animation side of things during like my Junior and Senior year while we're working kind of in our final projects I was able to partner with real effects at the time they were working on some Looney Tune shorts so that was kind of my cutting teeth moment into Hollywood you could say those were shown on the on the big screen so it was pretty cool to work on some really cool

iconic Warner Brother characters um I kind of found my way I knew eventually I was going to end up in Los Angeles or Hollywood area and that was always kind of the goal is to get on the big screen and you know get in those big movies and so I got there and it was really cool um fun process along the way getting to work with some amazing companies and kind of found my niche in the visualization world and so that kind of includes more of the previous side all the way into postviz also with some tech Fizz along the way but I really found myself enjoying the process of just storytelling and being involved more with full length sequences rather than just individual shots that either build up a beat or small section of the stories so and

kind of a secret if you're in the animation world is you actually you know previous always seem like a means to an end to get to final animation but when you're working in previous uh and the whole visualization process you kind of get the direct line of communication to the directors and producers and DPS or cinematographers and it's really special so I didn't really realize it was like a direct line of communication you're working directly with these people and so that was that was really cool because like the whole process of learning together and learning with them and exploring basically what their ideas are in their head and it really just coming out on the big screen super rewarding a much more rewarding than trying to get the eye blinks just right which I was in for a while but still really cool as well so I I kind of

always have enjoyed big large-scale action films and kind of enjoyed kind of the choreographies with certain complex sequences so complex kind of fight sequences more recently over the past three years Marvel kind of sunk their teeth in me so I've been working with them on some of their larger movies that haven't come out yet but so that's a it's a little bit about me and I kind of found myself again bouncing between either these big movies or some really cool action sequences and games as well um and some of those games include Apex Legends I was a huge fan of Halo and so I got to work on Bungie's collaboration on Destiny and Destiny 2. and then a really

special project that kind of I don't even know how it landed on my lap was with Gears of War 5. and it was just kind of like a trailer promo thing actually ended up winning some awards which is again like nothing I really would have found myself thinking I was going to be doing but very cool nonetheless so again I work for the third floor um I've been with them for about five years and the third little bit about the third floor we are one of the largest visualization studios in the world and they've really kind of found the specialty in the visualization process that's kind of really what they've honed in on so you know long story short is like that they are more into the storytelling aspect or how to get the division from the director out onto the into the 3D world most the time or into you know a

previous format and that uh is really hard sometimes it's kind of we we kind of describe previz is more like the blueprint uh Foundation Building for the final look of the film or the game and they do they're spread across a whole bunch of different mediums so you got your film you got TV and the episodics and the games the themed entertainment um big into the AR and the VR commercials so a whole bunch of just different mediums that they're spread across so it's really cool being a part of a studio like this because you can kind of jump around between all these different mediums if you'd like again I said I'm like kind of a sucker for the big action sequences so um kind of gravitate towards those stories so during that there's a process that we kind of go through so the the whole supervising of visualization includes

pretty much all of these processes sometimes depending on what the project is just small sections of it but a lot of times for the bigger you know projects or projects that need a little bit more help in the development stages will start actually doing everything so taking a script breaking it down going into the storyboard process creating animatics going into then the previous and the layout and that might include working in the virtual production side if they don't have anything that they you know that they they know they needed just a sentence but that sentence is supposed to be like a two-minute action sequence we'll do some Pitch Vis for them throw some ideas out so super collaborative very fun process because we're kind of literally in the creation side with all of the people that are creating this so third floor has been

around for over 15 years now so kind of well known in the the definitely the visualization side of things things and a fun little fact is that finally after all these years the third floor is going to be announcing probably pretty soon more openly that they're going to move into ttf animation as well so but that's a little bit more uh kind of specialized animation where they're kind of taking this virtual production in real time rendering and kind of combining that into an animation pipeline so this is a little kind of Sizzle promo reel for the third floor just kind of help you see some of the work we've been working on

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foreign [Music] [Applause] I'm sure well-known stuff there so fun projects that we've been able to be involved in um these are just some of the select game titles that we saw up there again specifically I was involved in Destiny Destiny 2 Apex Legends and gears 5. um all kind of fun super fun projects to collaborate with um and so I wanted to kind of use Apex Legends as a little case study to kind

of show this process of of how we kind of take some Concepts from from our Hollywood type films and how we kind of take those really just tools and Technology into doing it in a schedule that is a little bit more appropriate for games and game cinematics so but to be honest with you it's it's nothing new in terms of Storytelling that's all kind of kind of still the same as like trying to get that that's always kind of what we're striving for is like the clearest most compelling entertaining stories that we can tell and it's just kind of using kind of tips tricks and tools Tools in workflow and pipeline to get that all into the story so Apex Legends specifically uh the stories of the outlands with with Pathfinder and um this one was called fight night so

we'll take a quick peek here this is kind of uh examples of how our previous looked kind of more in the rougher for kind of some rough stages to the to the final pre-vis compared to the final look of the of the short and so this was the short was about I believe about seven minutes and so that's basically just like a short story um with seven minutes in a sequence that's pretty long especially even for a feature film a sequence that's like seven minutes long can be kind of a longer kind of intense sequence so just wanted to kind of share this a little segment example here [Music] [Applause] [Music]

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so you'll notice a lot of the previous looks very similar to the finals that's kind of our job um we you know as as the visualization process kind of evolves that's literally the goal so if you're seeing a one-to-one match from the previous to the finals that's um because we did our jobs well that doesn't always happen and sometimes it uh is you know there's improvements that come out into the finals that um we did just didn't either have time or they're very small subtleties that that happen but for the most part that's what we're striving for because that's the foundation and definitely the the core of what the the final shot is going to look like a lot of the the

visualization the previous side of things is really just getting the approval to be honest with like how this shot is going to be broken down you know the the amount of work that's going to go into the finals the level of effects the look the Polish the finish all that stuff so um a lot of that is then tied in with the story and the storytelling so as the story you know process the process of telling the story story for it to be very clear compelling entertaining fun so also um it so we're going to kind of go into this like breaking it down a little bit so kind of get a little bit into the the nuts and bolts of what this looks like a little bit more like behind the scenes stuff um but uh specifically for a lot of these Apex Legends uh shorts that we did we direct we worked with the director David Lawson um and also Alicia Thompson was a co-director on it so kind of just shout out to her as well

um super fun collaborative couple that um you kind of work with a studio that's kind of leading the whole story aspect of it so in in this example is uh the kind of Studio that was over everything was EA and then EA kind of filtered down and the finals house that third floor collaborated with was the mill and the mill did a lot of the the actual finals work on these um and so the mill was really kind of guiding the whole process for previz and working working so so I had my team at the third floor and we were working with this creative director and so the very similar in the Hollywood setup where your you know the third floor is kind of contracted to work with a larger studio and the larger Studio has a director and then they have their team of producers and you know creatives

that are also making these decisions so VFX supervisor editor and DP and so that's kind of the the relationship of kind of how we craft these things um so in you know again that's very similar to how we do things in Hollywood and it's just taking uh their vision and you know bringing it to life and so this one specifically in the visualization process was uh well over 200 shots and just about seven and a half minute sequence and so the previous process for this or giving the finals everything that they need we took it took us about five weeks to do that so for a seven minute sequence that's uh it was kind of a lot of shots that were produced over that period of time so a lot of iterative process and a lot of shop progression along the way here's uh some stunt viz choreography that was used actually to help kind of start the

process and get the previz actually going so a lot of times they'll give us maybe a storyboard or something to start with but in order to get really complicated action going pretty quickly we gotta actually either block things in um or go into an actual kind of real world setting and work with someone who is actually going to shoot this thing if they the way that they you know want to see it being shot and and just really kind of get that uh process the iterative process going sooner than later um it it's a lot of it has to do with setting up the timing the pacing and what exactly we're trying to tell in this you know short period of time that this this action sequence is going so here's an example of how kind of sometimes stunt viz will come into play and start the previous process

[Music] [Applause] so it was really quick I mean just see if I can play that again and just beat the audio here [Music] [Music] [Applause] um there on the left the storyboards kind of picture in picture with the stunt viz um a lot of times uh we'll go on set and work with the if there is a specific choreographer that's kind of setting up these these fight sequences the directors obviously usually heavily

involved but they'll have a you know the stunt choreographer work with the the stunt actors and they'll just act out these scenes a lot of that is um you know they have a general idea of how this the sequence is going to break down uh or you know who's going to end up with a weapon or who's gonna you know get uh you know the upper hand or who's gonna get beaten up but along that way there's just a lot of just exploration and experimentation in the action and then the director's job is just how do we shoot that in a really cool compelling interesting way and so during that process then we see it live most times and uh you know a director if we if they have like a motion capture suit on we're just capturing that motion we can just throw it on a generic rig or we can if we have rigs ready to go with the actual characters that kind of helps the director sometimes who's not as familiar with um in you know 3D uh can visualize

that um but it could just very well be um uh you know real live people and he's just framing up shots but passing that into previz we will then take that data or that motion capture data or just the reference from that stunt stunt viz and it will start creating the previous so getting the 3D cameras in there and you know figuring out the staging the composition the timing the pacing all that fun stuff but it really is instrumental in uh building the shots basically and a lot of uh continuity comes into play a lot of all the the technical stuff that you it starts starts to add up to where this is very clear now what this you know action is supposed to tell action can get really messy really busy um fun little fact um so David uh the the creative director on this one we found ourselves kind of

in the editing Bay which is pretty common just they're cutting this and we both kind of fancy Michael Bay's uh big action stuff um kind of hard not to being in loving action and we just spent like at least 15-20 minutes quoting The Rock back and forth to each other is pretty funny um it was a fun process because we could kind of take you know something that an editing process that can get pretty mundane and um just kind of keep it real and just have fun ideas and try things that I don't think any of us would have been like let's go from this right from the beginning but uh it kind of it's fun to see how their Vision actually evolves along the way um so basically you I'm sure without a doubt you've seen how over this past decade

especially over the past couple years how um all of what we're doing in Hollywood is really combining into video games and vice versa it's really cool to see how the progression goes and directing and cinematography uh kind of being gelled into these games and games kind of becoming a longer form version of a film uh something that I was always interested in in games was the whole story the whole kitten caboodle of how this beginning you you know start as this character and go all the way to the end in the game and this whole story that evolved along the way most films only last like a couple hours unless it's Lord of the Rings it's like days but um you could be immersed in a game for a lot longer than a film and the more sophisticated storytelling

in games are so interesting and it's it's not the simplified just hit you over the head with you know this is the story point this is the you know this is what's going to happen but if you were able to bring in like a film language into these games and have the opportunity to kind of have like a this idea of showing the audience rather than just telling the audience what they're supposed to know was always kind of interesting to me um as well as the the same way that a prologue to a film would open up and give you like little hints of what's going to come in the film um like the opening to seven was like one of my favorite sequences where you get all this like detail about the the Killer and stuff in the film and it was just really interesting you get those opportunities more so in games to do in trailers and prologues and and the

cutscenes of course uh and then of course the the audio you've you've kind of seen over the you know past decade too has uh you know the go-to kind of celebrities or kind of like famous people for voice overs and you know have all these epic scores that are just so awesome in in the games um and same thing you know that we're creating in in Hollywood these really high-end type of entertainment opportunities so that's definitely something that's been coming to the Forefront more recently and it's pretty cool here's some uh just quick examples thank you so again you'll see a lot of the

previous matching the finals a big part of that is just the timing of um and the the staging the blocking the composition so a lot of that is important because once you hand that off to like the finals team um it is it's kind of like putting the stamp on it to say hey this is basically what we're going to use in the cut for now and move it along to the final piece and so there there could be a time where it you know it usually kind of hands off to the finals it's pretty rare that it'll come back just because of the schedules um but in if if you were doing this in Hollywood the same way that if something isn't quite working or they show a test screening to a director and you know something about it just isn't right or needs Improvement it might come back then for another process or go into to reshoots and so the same thing in games

if something isn't quite right we need to go back into like even back to like stunt viz or some kind of choreography sequence that isn't quite right um and uh kind of redo that section so it's pretty common but again the the end goal is the same is just creating that that Pro the whole process of making it very clear to the audience and very entertaining at the same time here's a couple more examples of that foreign [Music] so the editing is a pretty big part of this whole process of course and the same way we kind of do this in Hollywood is we we kind of start with a

huge amount of shots um again we in games you might the the timeline might just be truncated down a little bit trimmed down so um you know there's pluses and minuses to that the plus side is you can you know get to the end result a lot quicker and it's um you know you don't have to keep drilling on the same shot over and over and over again um but definitely taking advantage of this sandbox approach where you have a lot of content to work with to start building and edit um and you know from the very beginning process which we're fleshing out the edit that's kind of like our um you know Master reference that we're always going back to is um build just building this edit on top of each other so a lot of times an edit may even just start with words and that's timed out to a soundtrack or some you know voices and or quickly evolve into storyboards or some concept artwork and then once we get into adding motion

to it that is obviously starting to flesh out more of the timing the state aging the compositions of all these shots but basically it's it's just flushing out the whole sequence is a you know as a whole because we keep looking at everything as a whole and you start breaking that whole sequence down into into beats and shots um and so pretty much the Final Cut of this then is handed off to the finals to finish and a lot of the times we sub you know supply all of the a lot of the 3D files so again that's like a huge heavy lifting in terms of starting the shot um even with if we're using motion capture data that we kind of start with as temp motion capture data um sometimes uh it's good enough to actually make into finals or we have cleaned it up enough to where if it's in game that just use it for final so that

data can sometimes go through sometimes they'll end up taking um you know the time to actually do a lot more complicated uh motion capture shoot um and so some fun opportunities come up if if you need motion capture you need to tell like action on the Fly sometimes wool as the animators will get into the suits and act some of these things out and take that animation add it to these characters and every once in a while you could be a character in a game and get all the way to the finals and that would be you up on the screen so it's it's a cool uh it's a fun little aspect to the visualization process as well and you know another kind of fun process too that is again like working working with all these different types of directors um you have the you have the ability to just kind of spitball ideas and really

take uh you know the essence of what they're trying to to tell the audience and either enhance it or you know maybe something the director might not have have thought of that you can add to or you know you you come up with ideas or your team comes up with ideas and it gets the director all excited to kind of take that idea and you know turn it into something different so there's all these alternate shots that come up along the way and that's yeah honestly that's like one of the most fun processes is to just um you know have the director say hey we trust you just just you know do something really cool with this sequence and it's really rewarding um to to have that opportunity because you're literally influencing the final look of the film um a lot of final vendors or VFX houses kind of sometimes get a little upset at third floor uh just because it's the

director producers they're always just like just match the previous just match the previous and so it's it's hard for them to get as creative when we have it all worked out but again that's that's literally our jobs is to to do that so once it gets to the finals it becomes a lot more streamlined straightforward to finish to be honest that's a lot of money saved in the end because if you're trying to figure all that out in finals it's usually going to cost a lot more and it also so can lower the quality because if you're not able to iterate as fast and you're not able to get you know like interesting compelling stuff that the director actually wants and you're kind of just having to pick away at little things along the way it ends up costing more money um and so that's that's literally a job is to try to get it to the finals as quickly as possible so here's some

oh just alt shots alternative shots examples of kind of just showing the iterative process foreign so um there's obviously way more than three versions of that um but that was just kind of an example of kind of how shop progression can can take place um and you know you kind of saw the first version as more like the vanilla version of this is the idea right so the

Pathfinder is just shooting his grappling hook out to kind of save himself from falling off the ship and it's slowly just involved uh in you know the camera to kind of work with the action and the motion to to rotate and tilt um and so that was uh kind of a small example of how a simple kind of shot idea progressed into something a little bit more interesting and entertaining especially involving the the grappling hook um here's a another example [Music] so again a lot of subtleties in this

but kind of necessary in a way for it to be clear and arguably better so just small tweaks to how the robot is going to attack from a punch to a kick the timing the slight angles of the camera and you know basically how to set that idea up for the kind of the best way to tell that part of the story but that's those are small examples of of how things can get worked out in the the progression of the shot um I mean again it kind of just goes back down to what the original idea was the storyboard most cases and getting it into 3D once you get into 3D a lot of um you know the the real technical issues of the clarity starts to get worked out just naturally because you need to have a camera that has a you know lensing on it um and you know in order to to have that

story make sense in depth um all those all those uh technical aspects just come into play um and so here's another example of that [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] so again this this one took a lot more than four versions but um you could see how the camera kind of started off flying down into showing this idea that the robots climbing back up the ship and kind of showing you know the state of Pathfinder and turned into a little

bit more interesting shot where it was kind of the camera starting low low angle good angle kind of staging to show how the robots coming up over the side of the ship robot kind of leaned over and setting up a little bit more interesting like foreground Middle Ground background to kind of tell that story um so that that was basically just small examples of what we're doing with the director to make the story better um but in specifically taking you know this concept that a lot of what we're doing in in film and attaching it into more of the game side um you know you'll we we've seen this uh just over this course of uh the year a couple years here now with all these new tools that are coming out all of the the real-time rendering um obviously the high def the graphics

the graphics are just getting insane so a lot of all these things are just kind of advancing what we're doing just tools to make our jobs easier um and it's at the end of the day it's it's really just about the entertainment side of things is how do we get the the level of entertainment the quality of entertainment to the next level and all these advances that are happening seem to be colliding with each other constantly um and you know being able to leverage real time uh you know software like unreal and um you know epic game stuff that they're using as well as Unity so like having these tools to be able to kind of see more of a finals look stuff earlier on is always an advantage and so we're able to leverage those the same way we are in like a virtual art department for Hollywood um and uh it's again it's very it's it's

awesome to be in this era right now for um having this the the combination that's back and forth between you know storytelling and Hollywood and and technology and stuff in games and having all of that just combine with each other and then you'd enhance the storytelling in games and enhance the technology and and film um and it's it's definitely uh you know an awesome thing where at the end of the day again like uh I think we're all after the same thing just having this really cool experience and this immersive experience and being able to share that with people is is really cool really fun and that is what third floor really Prides itself on is really just clear compelling entertainment that we're all kind of after and we definitely love working with those Studios and companies that

are involved in these kind of projects so um it's just been a very rewarding experience to work in both worlds and for me personally it's cool to see how they are just so interlinked in an awesome way um if you want more information about the third floor you can go to this website um we're just about to wrap up here in a few minutes I'll kind of open up for a couple questions q a um I guess there's a breakout room after uh I believe it's s204 so you can head over there if you want to kind of talk more in depth about any of this but um thank you so much and I'll kind of open the floor for Q a foreign [Applause]

have you ever had to do to make changes way later because of technical limits like for instance let's say uh you have a reflection or something that is a very important part of the scene and then because of a game setting on PC configuration for instance you cannot have Reflections and then it changes the meaning of that scene it you know it breaks the scene because you can't see the reflection or something like that some technical limitation that you might do you have you had to make changes for yeah awesome so the the question was I'm just kind of repeating this back for the camera here is uh you know have we had to make changes later on uh and kind of go back uh to kind of reflect those changes and a lot of times in the the previous process they will weigh that decision based on whether it whether or

not it's it's worth it in their budget to do that it might just get kicked down as a note to finals that's usually the case but every once in a while if if it's really important for a screening or for approval then yes we would have to kind of go back make that change sometimes it's painful where it's involving multiple things that you know would you know not make sense if you're showing it uh story-wise so if like a character has a helmet on and now they don't have a helmet on because that was really crucial to the story again if it makes sense for them to go back because it if if it's not crucial to telling that story or they can do it later it just makes more sense to kind of kick that down to a finals um you know note um hi there hi um I was wondering how much of a percentage of game engines are you using for doing uh this production as opposed to traditional animation

software and secondarily how much um how much of a change are you seeing uh with virtual production and sort of moving to a all pre-production are you still doing you know previous visualization as much or you sort of how is that changing the dynamic yeah so the question is kind of like the percentage of uh virtual production being used now and um kind of what the future I guess is how this is going to look and what we're kind of looking for um it I think the our studio specifically is really really uh just happy about virtual production and that whole process and pipeline right now it's very unfortunately it's very budget uh determined so because it's it the our what we want to do as a studio is make all real-time virtual kind of workflows

work for the project that's not always the case and that it right now it involves I won't say um twice the amount of work but it sometimes is twice the amount of resources in a way for example things that we could do we generally use Maya for our streamline process of getting it in 3D and and then we'll use the unreal side mostly for the virtual and the real time we our goal is to combine the two in a way that is Maya's taking advantage of Maya's tools in the best way possible most of the time it's with their their animation tools and their kind of quick easy viewport navigation and then taking advantage of all of unreals basically as a render engine so all the lighting and the effects and and

all of that would come out of it so our our ultimate goal is linking the two um right now it's again project dependent so if a project makes sense where this would iterate better in real time there's some aspects that it needs to be and stay in real time uh just because of interactive lighting and certain things that they want to choreograph um are all I think our ultimate goal is where we're moving definitely is going to be all just real time um essentially that was kind of the goal of viewport 2.0 in a way is uh just having that real-time viewport rendering work for us but there's a lot of limitations to that uh unreal unlocks a lot of things for us to to do but also there's limitations on the unreal side so but eventually that's where everything is going I think every project in the previous our goal is to

make that as efficient as if everything originally stayed in Maya the old school way percentage-wise I'm not sure exactly I mean it's probably like 50 50 on the amount of projects they're working on that involve unreal and unreal has just been so awesome to team up with our kind of tech team and our pipeline team so a lot of the proprietary tools that we're building in-house and that speak to Unreal and work with unreal basically to make our pipeline just super efficient that's uh you know constantly changing constantly changing especially over the past two years so um but absolutely I think our goal as a company is to move 100 into every project being real time and just being able to leverage you know the best of both worlds hello hi um you mentioned a little bit about um speaking with directors and the

people who are sort of handling the story as well as like getting things approved um how much and like how is that communication sort of structured is it like a few big meetings or are you able to sort of constantly send them like you showed off the different versions you had of the shots and stuff like that are you able to sort of send them constant updates or is it like bigger meetings to just sort of get all the questions answered at once so the question was kind of how the meetings kind of structured and how that kind of comes into uh the whole kind of iterative process um I think that a lot of a lot of the smaller um projects will help with the meetings to be a little bit more intimate and free-falling the bigger projects usually involve like a first major kickoff and they give you as much information as possible um and in a project like this uh Apex you know Legends project it was it's

it's not as large scale so the teams are kind of smaller which open you know the fact that you can communicate very quickly and have you know set up meetings very quickly most the time it's usually involved like a dailies and if it's not a dailies it's like a weeklies like two two times a week it's pretty common to kind of check in but communication is constantly free-flowing again there's things that they're gonna know information wise that we might not know because of just it's not ready to unleash basically into the story yet and they don't want to like jump the gun and say things sometimes it's the opposite they just give you a whole bunch of information the story that's going to just be wild and crazy and you're like you know this is a five-week schedule this isn't going to happen and so you're basically kind of figuring out what you can do during that time and and what's

what's feasible but the meetings are pretty regular that's pretty common um most the time you're in direct communication with a you know a VFX supervisor or someone who's going to kind of handle the final side of things um and it it's pretty much on a daily basis um same with the editor the editor is like probably the the most important component to it who's like communicating and they probably have a direct line to the director as well on apex Legends I had a direct line to the director so it wasn't that much of an issue to get information that I that I needed the nice thing about the director too was he's very familiar with the 3D side of things so I could explain things to him in a 3D world that made sense to him that you don't get that all the time but he came from like a a 3D background so he knew lighting he knew Maya which is uh you know being able to speak that

language is is very kind of powerful I guess um he had directors that don't know that stuff and you have to kind of figure out different language of how to explain that to them but it is uh still the same uh challenge as just being able to communicate clearly and make sure that uh you know the idea that there or whatever kind of vision that they have is being executed on the creative side and so it's also our jobs to communicate back if something isn't going to quite work um or if something isn't you know if they didn't you know that it was challenged that they never even thought of it's like cool idea but it could just be very well a challenge that is like this isn't quite how this is going to work and a lot of a lot of that time is they'll see something on a storyboard or a concept artwork and that's not built from 3D so it's just the 2D image and

it's like this is basically impossible to create we can make this version because of the way the lensing and the angles of cameras actually work and kind of proposed those ideas or just in take ideas and influence but the communication is again really regular if you know it's always encouraged to ask the questions of you know what's coming you know a lot sooner than later so there's no surprises um but it's it's you know just constantly being in communication um for somatics or game cuts and specifically do you prefer to start with storyboards and then move to animatics or start with a more defined concept art or do you just prefer to work based on the script and then assign shots to animators and then just iterate based from that

cool so yeah the question is kind of like what kind of part of the phase or process do I like to start with first whether that be storyboards or concept art or just nothing blank canvas um it it really kind of depends if it's um if it's a if it's a script that I was given or um you know an idea that was given um I if I am very influenced by it and it's very compelling and interesting and and honestly if it's something that all of a sudden starts creating visuals in my head I I really love blank canvas it's just like this is what I see um a lot of the time uh that uh I'm giving given storyboards uh it it helps to give me like oh this is this was the idea this is a general idea of you know there's probably like nine times out of ten um the storyboards are good they're working but there's always that you know

10 chance where it's just you know this isn't really that good a composition or you can tell it was just not it was kind of an afterthought um and so it storyboards can actually deter you sometimes and being Ultra creative because it's like okay this is what's being expected so I gotta do something like this a lot of the times if I'm seeing something uh an idea that's really awesome really creative I'll just quickly get the storyboard version out and here you go and then just go right into the alts and say but we could do this and show them with each other and uh they really like that I mean a lot of the times the directors will expect that from third floor because it's like this is this is kind of what we are known for so you have some directors that really know what they want they they want to execute this Vision exactly so they'll give us exactly what they want this is a keyframe concept boom just make that and

that's cool like sometimes it's like super cool uh to start on that side of things because it's like this is literally the image that's coming out of the director's head and we just want to create that shot in 3D now so I like to work to answer the question I like to work in all parts of the process I prefer a blank canvas when it's something that I get inspired to do and then if it's something that a director's vision is really powerful then it's uh it's really cool to kind of make that come to the real life or truition there hello hi oh it's pretty loud uh thanks uh Mitch it was a really cool presentation and really cool to hear about your process um and I love that you brought up seven the opening titles as well it's personal favorite of mine it's Kyle Cooper at its finest yes I was wondering a bit about when you work with um sort of cutscenes that happen in the

games or in between you know portions of gameplay how much if you worked on those scenarios how much do you work with you know game director and narrative designers to kind of get the pacing in the cutscenes you mentioned you know a lot of your work um in in the edit and previous kind of getting the you know the right balance so do you kind of you know in this preceding things happening in gameplay if there's you know a lot of action or you know a slower portion of gameplay are you involved sort of with the with the team of you know what sort of happens yeah so the the question was just like in more Focus I guess like how uh this is the this process has involved more in-game and if I've been involved in that um actually not as much in-game um I guess the closest to that was with Bungie's Destiny but it was it the same way as you have a creative director at a final Studio or a director at a

um you know big studio uh there's like a you know game director that's directing the game uh the same same ideas that a director is like we want to be able to tell this in this story um so I you know would take that into just basically the closest I think like I said was with a bungee with a with a prologue to a to uh Bungie's Destiny um so it was very similar you know you the director has a vision and the director wants to actually have a certain idea in this prologue come out and um you know the the a lot of what you're showing in the in a prologue or uh in game is setting up the tone and setting up basically this um this narrative that's gonna happen so you've you know foreshadowing some things and maybe just hinting at uh you know future in-game things that are coming but it's it's

like working the same way as if it was very similar to a cinematic the Cinematic may be a little bit more freedom and flexibility because a lot of of times the game is in early development or you know super early stages of development where this promo or trailer or cinematic really doesn't relate necessarily to game play and they and it gives you a lot more freedom because you're not locked into well this is not exactly what it's going to look like in game um so it's cool we can just move these buildings and do stuff over here and so it's it definitely offers more freedom and is not as I guess just structured in a way that it has to work and make sense in game so I think that's the biggest difference thank you yeah thank you hello hi I wanted to ask you um when you are working with the game Studio but the one which is not using Unreal but for example has his own

inside engine do you find it in some way more challenging or it doesn't matter in your work uh saying their own proprietary in-game engine yeah very excited awesome fantastic thank you thank you everyone [Applause] [Music]